Songwriters

The songs of The Wedding Present (And Cinerama) are not all the sole work of David Lewis Gedge. There have been, at the time of writing, nearly twenty different writing partnerships in the crafting of the songs over the last thirty-five-plus years.

However, the first seven years or so of The Wedding Present’s release feature the sole writing credit of (Gedge). This was possibly a combination of two factors. One, David was, at the time, the only member of the Performing Rights Society. The PRS, as it was more commonly known, was an organisation that was dedicated to ensuring that musicians received reimbursement for the playing of music written by its members. To be a member required paying a fee and David was the only one who did so, leading to the credit reading as it did. The second factor to take into consideration was that it was stated, when Peter Solowka was fired from the band after the recording of Seamonsters, that one of the reasons for the split was that Solowka did not come up with any of his own guitar parts.

By the time of the sessions that became Watusi, the first song credits appeared with other band member’s names on. The names of Gregory, Smith, Dorrington and Belk began to appear on records. And interestingly because of the different variations of credits, we can guess at the chronological history of the songs in this timeframe. (Gedge/Smith/Dorrington/Gregory) was presumably the earliest formation and this gave us just one song, ‘Let Him Have It’. Darren Belk then joined and, one assumes, helped finished two other songs, ‘So Long Baby’ and ‘Catwoman’ which gives us the credit of (Gedge/Smith/Belk/Dorrington/Gregory). Finally, the remainder of these sessions gave us (Gedge/Smith/Belk/Dorrington).

This revolving pattern of songwriters continues over the next twenty-five years, more or less. With the exception of the early Cinerama years when the song credits again just read (Gedge), there has been a steady progression of co-writers. Sometimes, it is Gedge who brings the formative idea to the studio and the rest of the band work on it with him there. Sometimes, it is the other band members who bring the original idea of a song to Gedge and the rest of the band. In the last couple of years songs have been brought into fruition under working titles such as ‘Mel 3’ or ‘Jon 5’ hinting strongly at where their creation lies. Gedge has often mentioned how having an ever-evolving line-up has kept both his enthusiasm burning and the band’s sound always sounding fresh.

As mentioned above, other than a few oddities which are mentioned below, there have been, as of early 2022, nineteen different song-writing credits. The most recent, (Gedge/Stewart/Howard/Hardwick) has had two credits so far with last year’s ‘You’re Just a Habit That I’m Trying to Break’ and the just-released ‘I Am Not Going To Fall In Love With You’ but the situation is always changing as Chris Hardwick has now left the band and former guitarist Samuel Beer-Pearce has also temporarily returned to co-write while Jon Stewart was away on tour with Sleeper in 2021.

Of the 244 songs* released by The Wedding Present/Cinerama, the most prolific credit is, unsurprisingly, that of (Gedge) with 105 songs followed by (Gedge/Cleave) with 41 songs. Simon Cleave joined The Wedding Present at the time of the Saturnalia sessions and continued in the transition through to Cinerama and back out the other side into the reformation of The Wedding Present with Take Fountain. In total, he is credited on 44 different songs. The next most prolific, in terms of credits are Simon Smith (36 songs), Darren Belk (32) and Charlie Layton (26).

Of the oddities mentioned above, there are four songs where non-band members have part of the credit. In the Cinerama years, there are two songs where the original song melody which was sampled on the new song led to a credit to the original artist – ‘Love’ co-credits Bobbie Womack and ‘Crusoe’ co-credits Robert Mellin. The former has a sample from Aretha Franklin’s ‘I’m In Love’ and the latter is from the original tv theme of ‘Robinson Crusoe’ from 1964.

The other two are ‘England’ which features a recital from (now) Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage using the words from his poem ‘The English’. The other is ‘Wales’ which credits actor, Andrew Teilo who supplied the Welsh translation.

*This is as of February 2022 – the statistics below will be updated as we go.

Line-Up’s

Involved in song writing table

Cleave – Simon Cleave (guitarist)
Smith – Simon Smith (drummer)
Belk – Darren Belk (bassist, guitarist)
Layton – Charles Layton (drummer)
Dorrington – Paul Dorrington (guitarist)
Ramsay – Graeme Ramsay (drummer, guitarist)
Alexander – Patrick Alexander (guitarist)
De Castro – Terry De Castro (bassist, guitarist, backing vocalist)
Beer-Pearce – Samuel Beer-Pearce (guitarist)
Lockey – Jayne Lockey (bassist, backing vocalist)
Wadey – Danielle Wadey (bassist, guitarist, backing vocalist, keyboardist)
Howard – Melanie Howard (bassist, guitarist, backing vocalist, keyboardist)
Gregory – Keith Gregory (bassist)
McConville – Chris McConville (guitarist)
Stewart – Jon Stewart (guitarist)
Hardwick – Chris Hardwick (drummer)